System-Level Analysis of Lignin Valorization in Lignocellulosic Biorefineries

Kefeng Huang; Peyman Fasahati; Christos T Maravelias

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2019.100751

System-Level Analysis of Lignin Valorization in Lignocellulosic Biorefineries

iScience. 2020 Jan 24;23(1):100751. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2019.100751. Epub 2019 Nov 28.

Authors

Kefeng Huang¹, Peyman Fasahati¹, Christos T Maravelias²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1415 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
² Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1415 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA. Electronic address: christos.maravelias@wisc.edu.

Abstract

We study the economics and energy efficiency of biorefineries employing lignin valorization. We use superstructure-based process synthesis to study different configurations under different types of constraints. Using optimization, we examine the impact of various parameters for lignin valorization such as bioproduct selling price, production cost, conversion coefficient, and energy requirement. The results show that the optimal strategy leading to a minimum ethanol selling price (MESP) of $3.44/GGE does not include lignin valorization. Results indicate that under certain scenarios, the optimal biorefinery strategies with lignin valorization tend to be energy deficient, and thus the optimal pretreatment technology may switch from γ-valerolactone-based deconstruction to ammonia fiber expansion. Further analysis is performed to study how improvements in combinations of selected parameters can lead to lower cost for a thermal-neural biorefinery.

Keywords: Bioengineering; Bioresources; Industrial Engineering; Metabolic Engineering; Systems Engineering.